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Unsolicited advice is similar to finding Space Jam on TV: you’ll never actually seek it out, but when it accidentally butts its way into your life, it can certainly make a difference. Spoiler alert—I will not end this column with a half-court dunk.
This just in: Squirrels lack opposable thumbs for typing and they don’t have enough brain capacity to get into a top university. That being said, I’m sure that squirrels can make enough questionably funny jokes in 12 weeks to last a lifetime. Let me introduce myself—I am The Gothic Squirrel.
I’m simply amazed by Duke students. When we aren’t on campus, people brag a lot about how smart we are. Basing my perceptions of Duke students on their reputation in these discussions, I had every intention of hearing stories from the smartest students in the world my freshman year. While I did technically hear stories from smart people, the content of the stories surprised me. I haven’t heard anyone gloating about how they got Dean’s List or boasting about their research publications (most likely because it is harder to write a research paper than it is to write a non-offensive satire on a Monday). So how do most of us compensate for these lost chances for accolades? We have resorted to bragging about our antics in order to beef up our social resumes. Stop me if you’ve heard these: “Sorry, I can’t chillax with you tonight, I’m sick because I passed out on Campus Drive last night! HAHA,” “Yeah, summer starts in like two weeks, and I don’t have any friends with benefits where I’m interning. LOL” or my personal favorite, of which I have yet to understand the true meaning, “I was so obliterated last night I don’t even remember what happened.... it was so fun. ROFLCOPTER.” These phrases alone are funny, but the real kicker is that I hear these almost exclusively in the library (Social hour commence!) and on Facebook. So why do we do this?
A few weekends ago, I was speaking with an alumnus of my fraternity who graduated in 1991. I grilled him for at least two hours on different traditions he had “back then.” I was trying to hear stories about some of the things he can distinctly remember. Most of his stories were not of epic one-night stands or drunken shenanigans, but of activities he looked forward to every week. The idea of keeping simple, sustained traditions alive was reinforced last weekend when I returned to my summer camp for our yearly tradition of a campfire reunion, which turned out to be a night of the counselors sharing an awesome plethora of stories about former campers or events from previous reunions. This has made me think about the traditions I have been part of during my time at Duke. If someone asked you what your traditions were at Duke, how would you answer?
Parents weekend has come and gone with a bang, in case you didn’t know. The activities were plentiful, from concerts in Von der Heyden to football tournaments on the quad, but the focus was on seeing our parents one more time before Thanksgiving. For many, it gives a chance to meet the parents of our friends and gives rise to the question “How in the world are you two related?” My friends and I had fun eating dinner with my family because we didn’t wake up at 4 a.m. (ahem, stay up until 4 a.m.) to wait in line for tickets to the basketball game.
I hate e-mail.
It is easy for anyone to be a Debbie Downer and complain about one of the most widely used systems on campus. That being said, it is amazing how far ahead our bus system is with regard to other universities. Parking and Transportation was able to locate and return my phone back to me within five business days! (Note: if you find a lost phone, call the last person on it. It takes about one minute and saves that person quite a bit of hassle.) Said phones will come in handy once these GPS’s on buses start to work and hopefully will be a part of the mobile Duke app. But how would they be able to make the system even better? Money might help, but you’d have to go to the third derivative to find anything positive about our economy right now.
As the West campus social scene comes back alive, everyone is quickly realizing the same thing I did— fratmusic.com was shut down in May. For those who never encountered this website, it was pretty much a cornucopia of music at the click of a mouse to which you could dance, grind, bounce or study. There are two fates for pop culture staples—be either overused or become archaic over the years (Kazaa jokes, George W. Bush impressions, Ralph Nader’s ears) or live forever (Bill Clinton jokes, Brodhead’s rhetoric and “Hey Scottie Pippen, why the long face?”). Fratmusic.com will probably be falling into the former category for the general public, though I wonder where fratmusic will still reside in our memories of college five years from now.
Did you know uneducation is not a word? Education is a word. Uneducation is a word defined only in Uncyclopedia. I’m confident that our campus, known for its “educated” students, is hard at work trying to prove that there is, indeed, a definition lurking on the campus. I can see the (urban)dictionary entry now: “Uneducation, n: 1) Australian Rhodes Scholar 2) College Friday Nights.”
On a rousing FDOC, awkward, insubstantial and boring conversations were commonplace with second-tier friends. Many students will ask the question “How was your summer?” or other recurring favorites such as “Where are you living?,” “How is your significant other?” or “Have you beaten Starcraft II yet?” I’ve devised multiple methods over the years to avoid these pointless questions and conversations so we can all delve back into our conversations lamenting the fall of Ruckus Player, Juicy Campus and the New York Knicks.
I’d like to believe I’m somewhat of an authority on starting life at a new school, having switched schools 3 times in my grade school career.
Many Duke students have found a new roommate by now. Even the graduates have two new roommates: Mom and Dad. For me, living at home has re-exposed me to the generation gap. Have you ever been slapped in the face by the generation gap? I walked into Old Navy and saw a display titled “family jeans.” I wasn’t sure whether they were trying to appeal to the whole family or just wanted to make a pun off “family genes,” but what I saw was staggering. There were three sections spaced 5 feet apart, each with jeans for tween-, teen- and queen-agers. The first set sat on the hip, the second 3 inches below the hip and the last sitting so far above the hip the belly button was covered. The slap in the face occurred when I pointed out this phenomenon to my mother, who muttered something about how different things were from when she was young, and then expressed her desire to shop at Ann Taylor.
As I finished my movie theater concessions shift, I thought to myself, “Everybody needs to have a minimum wage job in his life.” If you have a minimum wage job early in life, you’ll get to meet some of the most interesting people in the world (he doesn’t always eat popcorn, but when he does, he eats Orville Redenbacher). They roll in to “Sex and the City” with a $7.50 bucket o’corn. (Popcorn: 4.4 cents/oz. Gas is 3.70/gallon: 2.9 cents per oz. America: where popcorn is 50% more expensive than gas.) Getting free movies is a nice perk, but the stories I have acquired from the customers come in quite handy when the conversation at a party starts veering towards the dichotomy of the veins of a Ginkgo biloba.
Have you ever gone to a grocery store and looked at your receipt after your purchase? Not Uncle Harry’s general store, where boxes of cereal cost upwards of $7, but one that has a diet soda selection wider than diet brown. At these real stores when you get receipts, there’s a nice little statistic telling you “how much you saved on this trip.” I recently went to the store with my mom and we saved $27 by using coupons, instant rebates and buying BOGO items as though the store was going to run out of them—there’s nothing like a good shopping trip to remind you of your Jewish heritage.
